Author note - SO, yeah another fuck-ass big chapter I had to split cause I wrote too much, anywho. The amount of support I am getting for this mid-tier (in my humble opinion) story is insane. Thank you all. I have I am on schedule, 200,000 words are ready, with a million more well on the way.
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We had set up 3 teams of 3 for the scouting mission.
The scouts set out at dawn, slipping through the interior of the skyscraper until they reached the cracked mouth that spilled them into the city.
The world outside the QZ walls still carried the hush of morning, though "quiet" here was never safe. The River that they were meant to follow was not there before the outbreak, but due to flooding and no one maintaining the city a new river was formed, flowing through what was once busy intersections and roads.
It stretched out grey and sluggish beside them, its surface broken by chunks of concrete and half-submerged cars that once belonged to commuters. 3 of them moved in a loose formation, hugging cover and keeping low, eyes never resting on one spot for long. Cal's orders had been clear: west and northwest, map what you can, don't take risks you can't walk away from.
Reggie was the first to break the silence, whispering when they came across a stretch of abandoned vehicles frozen in gridlock. Skeletons slumped in some of the seats, jawbones sagging toward one another as though locked in endless, silent conversation.
"You think they just sat here? Waiting for someone to clear the way?" His voice was too loud, even if it was only a murmur. Darren shot him a look and hissed for him to shut it, but everyone else's eyes still lingered on the bones.
You couldn't help but look. The dead were everywhere in Boston, reminders etched into steel and bone that no escape plan had worked, no authority had saved them.
They pressed on, boots crunching on glass and gravel, rifles held ready but never raised unless shadows moved. Every sound was magnified out here.
A gull's cry cut the air like a blade. Somewhere in the distance, a can clattered down a broken street. Every noise sent hearts hammering, every silence felt like the world holding its breath. The city was too still, then suddenly too alive, and the scouts lived in that constant tension.
They spotted their first cluster of infected across the river near a half-collapsed playground. Four of them, three upright, one crouched beneath the skeleton of a slide, gnawing on something too rotten to name.
Their heads twitched at odd angles, arms jerking spasmodically, legs dragging but never stopping. The scouts crouched low and watched for a long moment, breath held until Darren finally marked their position on the map and gestured them away. No point in wasting ammo or drawing attention. Still, as they crept on, Reggie whispered, "You ever think about how many more there are? Out there, I mean. Beyond the city." No one answered. It wasn't the kind of thought you wanted to carry with you.
By mid-morning they stumbled across the remains of a FEDRA checkpoint. The barricades were still there: sagging lines of barbed wire, sandbags rotted open and spilling their guts into the mud, a guard tower collapsed onto its side like a drunk.
The words "WE WERE NEVER SAFE" were scrawled in thick black paint across the nearest wall, the letters warped by rain but still shouting through the ruin. Rusted rifles and broken helmets littered the ground, shells and dark stains that had once been blood clinging stubbornly to the cracked asphalt.
Darren picked up one of the rifles, turning it over before letting it drop again. "Guess FEDRA didn't last long here," he muttered. Janice, who had been silent most of the way, finally spoke: "Or they lasted too long. Long enough to make enemies before the infected finished the job." They didn't linger. Too many angles, too much exposure. The city didn't forgive those who stood still.
The trail along the river told its own story. A makeshift shelter of tarps and driftwood lay collapsed beneath an overpass, its ropes frayed and pulled loose. On a bench nearby sat a child's firetruck toy, cracked down the middle, sun-bleached but still bright red against the grey ruin.
Reggie muttered, "They tried," and this time no one told him to shut up. Every trace of survival was a record of failure. No campfires, no voices, no people left to tell their stories. Just ruins layered on ruins.
They marked each location carefully, cataloguing even the smallest scraps: a bent fishing hook could mean the difference between eating and starving later. If the sites were abandoned long enough, Cal would send scavengers back. Nothing was wasted anymore. Nothing could be.
When the sun reached its peak, they stopped beneath the skeletal remains of another bridge, huddling in the cool shadow while Darren checked their bearings. No fire, just quick bites of jerky and stale crackers, the kind of food that left your jaw aching more than your stomach full. The silence pressed on them harder than hunger.
You never realized how loud the world used to be until silence was all you heard.
Wind moaning through shattered windows, your own heartbeat thudding in your ears, the faint creak of steel above as the bridge settled on its ruined foundations. "Feels like walking through a grave," Janice said.
Darren didn't look up from the map. "It is a grave."
They set out again, following the bend of the river, skirting a half-sunken playground where a slide leaned into the water like a broken limb.
Later, they found what must have once been a survivor camp. Fire pits ringed with charred stones, fish skeletons scattered nearby, hooks bent from nails, shoelaces braided into fishing line. No bodies, no signs of struggle, just the eerie absence of people.
"Could've lasted a while," Reggie said, almost hopefully. Darren's answer was flat. "Could've. Doesn't mean they did." Still, he strapped a crude spear of rebar and wood to his back. Tools were tools, and tools meant a chance to live.
By the time the light began to fade, they were circling back toward safer ground. Their notepad was heavy with markings: infected sightings, survivor traces, FEDRA ruins. Enough to justify the day, enough to call it progress. But none of them spoke much as they walked. The silence clung to them, pulled from every skeleton in a car, every scorched message on a wall, every toy abandoned on a bench.
Civilization hadn't vanished all at once; it had died slowly, in screams and scraps, leaving scars that the scouts were now forced to walk. And each step they took carried the weight of those scars, reminders that they weren't walking through a city anymore. They were walking through a graveyard.
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The second group had split more north east.
Threading through narrow streets where the asphalt had cracked like broken glass and weeds pushed up through every seam. They moved cautiously, 3 of them, their breath steaming in the cold air, rifles carried but not raised.
It was dangerous to raise them unless absolutely necessary, if you looked ready to shoot, sometimes it invokes Murphy's law and the city gives you a reason. Their orders were to sweep north east, mark any sites worth noting, then circle back before dark.
Simple on paper, but nothing out here was simple.
The pharmacy came into view just past noon. At first glance it looked promising: a squat brick building with faded lettering across the front, windows boarded but intact, a hand-painted sign still swinging from rusted chains. The blue paint had long since peeled, but the word Pharmacy was still visible under the grime.
One of the scouts, Alana, pointed. "Could be stocked. Even if it's not, maybe useful for later runs." The others nodded. Cal wanted maps and notes as much as supplies, every building catalogued, every cache marked.
The front door was swollen with water damage, its lock long ago broken. They shouldered it open, the hinges screaming before falling silent in the dim interior. The air inside was heavy, still, a stale weight pressing down the moment they stepped through. Dust lay thick across the floor, disturbed only by footprints that stopped at the threshold, like nobody had dared go further.
Their flashlights cut through the dark, beams sweeping over shelves half-collapsed with age. Empty pill bottles crunched under their boots. At first it seemed like any other abandoned store: gutted, looted, left to rot.
Then the smell hit them. Not fresh, not the sharp metallic tang of blood, but something deeper, older, sweet and cloying like meat left too long in summer heat. They all froze. That smell never meant anything good.
The back of the pharmacy told the rest of the story. They found the bodies slumped together in a cluster, some on the floor, others leaned against shelves or each other, a tangle of limbs and faces twisted in unnatural repose.
There were more than twenty. Adults and children, some didn't look old enough to walk on their own steadily.
Some still had blankets wrapped around their shoulders, others clutched toys or worn photographs. Bottles lay scattered at their feet, each one empty, the labels faded but the intent clear. One of the scouts gagged, pressing a hand to his mouth. The silence in the room seemed to thicken, as if the walls themselves held their breath.
On the counter was a note. Paper yellowed, edges curled, ink smudged but legible. Alana picked it up with gloved hands and read aloud, voice low, each word weighed down:
"The infected are outside. They've been scratching at the boards for 4 days now. We have no guns, no way out, no food and water. We thought FEDRA would come. We thought anyone would come. There are twenty-two of us here, six children. We can't fight. We can't run. We won't be torn apart screaming. We've decided to go out together. Please, if you find this, remember we were here. We didn't want to die like animals."
The date was scrawled at the bottom: October 2015. Almost fourteen years ago.
Nobody spoke for a long moment. Their flashlights wavered as they shifted uncomfortably, eyes flicking from the note to the bodies slumped in shadow. A child's skeleton rested against a mother's side, the small bones of their hand still clutching fabric in a gesture that spoke louder than any words could. The silence was unbearable.
Finally, Thomas muttered, "They poisoned themselves." His voice cracked halfway through, like saying it out loud made it real. Alana folded the note carefully and tucked it into her vest.
Connor, who had been the first to break down at the sight, whispered, "This is what it'll be for us, isn't it? One day. Trapped somewhere. No way out. Waiting for death." No one argued. No one offered comfort. Because he was right. Out here, in this world, death was rarely merciful. The people in this pharmacy had made the only choice left to them, and in a way, it was braver than waiting for claws and teeth.
They searched in silence after that. Drawers pulled open revealed nothing but moldy bandages and bottles too degraded to be useful. The backroom held cots where some of them had slept, blankets still folded, a chessboard mid-game. A mug with lipstick stains sat on a shelf, untouched for more than a decade. Everything felt too alive, too recent, as though the people would step out from the shadows any moment. But they never would.
By the time they left, the smell clung to their clothes, the weight of the note clung to their minds. Outside, the city looked the same ruined, grey, and empty but the scouts carried a new heaviness with them. The silence between them wasn't just caution anymore; it was grief.
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The third group drew the shortest straw, though none of them minded much. Their orders were to stay closer to the skyscraper exit, covering the rougher terrain to the south west.
Broken streets gave way to collapsed overpasses and half-sunken buildings, as though the city itself had grown tired and decided to sag into the earth. They didn't expect much, too many choke points, too many blind corners but Cal wanted every piece of ground mapped. Even the useless stretches had to be logged.
The air was damp and carried the distant reek of stagnant water. The group 6, due to a last minute addition, were led by a wiry kid named Anders picked their way through leaning rowhouses and jagged rebar. A map case bounced against his hip, half-filled with scribbled notes and crude sketches. "This whole area's shit for movement," he muttered. "One molotov in the right place and you'd be cut off."
The others murmured their agreement, eyes flicking up to the skeletal frame of a collapsed overpass overhead. It groaned occasionally when the wind shifted, as if threatening to bury them under a rain of concrete and steel.
Half an hour into their sweep, they stumbled across it: the library. Its facade was cracked and sagging, but the arched windows and faded stonework still carried a certain weight, like a relic of a time when books mattered more than bullets.
The front steps were half-buried in rubble, the doors hanging loose on broken hinges. A faded banner, its letters washed to near nothing, still clung above the entrance: Boston Public Branch.
Anders raised a fist, signaling halt. They scanned the perimeter first, always.
A few shambling figures moved in the street two blocks down, too far to be a problem yet, but their ragged moans carried clearly in the cold air. The group crouched low, watching. There were more than a handful, maybe a dozen. "They'll drift closer," whispered Mara, the second in command. "We should be quick."
Inside, the library was a cavern of shadows. Rows of toppled shelves blocked parts of the main hall, books mouldering in heaps where water had dripped through holes in the roof. Dust rose in thin clouds with each step.
Their flashlights cut through the gloom, illuminating carved wood railings and marble that had seen better centuries. And yet, amid the decay, there was something valuable.
In the back office, behind a half-collapsed door, Anders found what they hadn't dared hope for: maps. Dozens of them, rolled in tubes and stacked in drawers. Street maps of Boston, transit layouts, zoning plans. Some yellowed with age, others laminated and still crisp.
He whistled low. "Well, happy fucking birthday to us."
They spread a few across a table, the paper crackling under their gloves. These weren't scavenger scraps, these were detailed layouts, covering whole districts, old infrastructure routes, even storm drains. For Cal, this was gold.
They stuffed as many as they could carry into their packs, each map case bulging until the straps strained. Every one of them felt the weight not just on their shoulders, but in their nerves. This was the kind of find that could shift their whole future.
The library was already behind them, swallowed in dark silence, its shelves of rotting paper and dust left to crumble. The six scouts slipped out through a side alley, careful not to draw the attention of the few stragglers they'd glimpsed on the way in. Their packs were heavy with maps, precious finds and every muscle in their bodies screamed to get the fuck back home without incident.
The day was thick with damp, the air carrying the acrid stench of mildew, charred metal, and something sharper underneath: decay. The street ahead stretched open, a wet patchwork of broken asphalt, puddles, and the black skeletons of buildings that leaned like drunks in the dark.
At first, it seemed clear.
Then Mara froze, eyes narrowing at the movement up the block.
Shapes, dozens of them dragging themselves across the open space. Not a dozen. Dozens.
Her stomach dropped.
Anders counted quickly under his breath. "Shit… at least forty. Maybe more."
They weren't just shamblers either. The pack twitched and shifted, faster outlines weaving between the slower ones. The distinctive crouched stalk of stalkers, skittering in and out of shadow. And worse the rattling, guttural shrieks of clickers echoing faintly as they twitched their fungal crowns back and forth.
Mara's throat tightened. There were at least twenty of them, their faces split with cordyceps, jaws snapping at air.
"That's too many," Anders whispered. "Way too many."
They huddled into the alley wall, barely breathing, praying the things would drift past. If they stayed silent, if they kept low—
BANG.
The sound was sharp, metallic, deliberate. Not at them, but at the rusted husk of a car twenty meters down. Another shot followed, punching into the hood.
And then, impossibly, the alarm went off.
A long, blaring, shrieking howl filled the night.
The horde froze. Heads turned in perfect unison. A beat of silence then chaos. The entire mass screamed as one, and the street exploded into motion.
"RUNNERS!" someone screamed, but they didn't need the warning.
The first wave sprinted forward, limbs jerking, claws raking the air. Behind them, stalkers broke into bounding leaps, their growls low and guttural. The clickers were worse their shrieks knifed through the night, sharp enough to rattle the scouts' bones as they surged forward, arms swiping wildly.
And then the ground seemed to shift.
From the rear of the horde, something massive pushed its way forward a twisted, hulking shape. It was a clicker, or at least it had been. The fungus had thickened across its arms and shoulders, forming plates of hardened bark-like growth. Its head was split wide, like a bloater's, but not fully hardened, the fungal ridges cracked and bleeding with every step. It moved faster than it had any right to, a grotesque halfway creature something between stages.
An abomination.
The sight of it broke the scouts' fragile composure.
"They sicced them on us!" Mara shouted, her voice ragged with panic. "That bastard led them here!"
Anders shoved her shoulder hard. "Move! GO!"
The alley erupted in sound boots slamming into wet pavement, the roar of the horde behind them growing closer with every breath. Radios crackled with static as one scout gasped into the mic:
"This is Third! We're blown repeat, we've been blown! Eighty, maybe more — runners, clickers, stalkers. And some kind of fucking fat abomination! Heading back to the skyscraper, north approach!"
Static shrieked in their ears before Cole's voice came through, tight and sharp: "Copy, Third! Barricades live, hold your pace, don't stop! We've got you. MOVE!"
They ran harder, lungs burning, packs slamming against their backs with every desperate step. Behind them, the horde closed in, the scraping, the moaning, the inhuman shrieks all blending into one wall of noise.
The scouts rounded a corner, one of them stumbling on loose brick. A runner slammed into him instantly, dragging him to the ground. He screamed, knife flashing, fungus spraying as Mara shot the thing off him. Blood splattered across her face as she yanked him upright.
"KEEP GOING!"
As the run they kept on shooting anything that got too close, throwing molotovs and nail bombs wildly behind them, anything to stop the motherfuckers.
The clickers were too close now shrieks splitting the air just meters behind. The abomination roared, a sound deep enough to vibrate in their chests, before it smashed through a half-collapsed fence, scattering debris like twigs, running through a fire made by a molotov like it was nothing.
The skyscraper loomed ahead, finally visible.
At the base, Cal's people were already in position. Barricades of sandbags and scavenged steel, barrels ready to burn, rifles raised. Shadows moved across the walls as more fighters scrambled into place.
Through the radio: "We see them, north approach, eighty strong! Barricades hot, first volley on your mark!"
The scouts' legs were jelly, their lungs knives, but they pushed harder. Every step carried the weight of death at their backs.
The horde screamed closer. Runners clawing at the ground. Stalkers darting like predators. Clickers shrieking. And the abomination, roaring to high heaven, unstoppable, every stride shaking the street.
The scouts weren't sure if they'd make it.
But the skyscraper's walls were ahead. And beyond them, guns waited.
The battle for their lives was about to begin.
The skyscraper loomed ahead like a black mountain, its jagged glass and skeletal steel cutting into the night sky. Floodlights snapped on one after the other, bathing the barricades in a pale glow. Figures moved across the top like shadows — rifles braced, helmets gleaming, molotovs lit and ready.
"Keep running!" Mara screamed, her throat raw.
The horde thundered behind them, a wall of shrieks and guttural roars.
A voice barked from the wall above them, hoarse with adrenaline: "Contact north! Barricades live! FIRE!"
The street lit up in gunfire.
The first volley came like a hammer, rifles blazing in staggered bursts. Tracers cut the dark, slamming into the lead runners. Heads exploded in sprays of red, limbs tore free, and bodies tumbled. The defenders didn't stop, magazines spat round after round, the thunder of automatic fire rattling the night as shell casings rained down from firing positions above.
The scouts had no choice but to dive low, boots skidding against wet asphalt, hearts pounding. Bullets hissed overhead, cracking into the mass behind them.
"Down! Get down!" someone shouted from above.
They ducked under the withering fire, scrambling toward the ropes that had been dropped from the barricade's edge. Thick cords slapped against the wall, swinging wildly as defenders shouted over the roar.
"Go, go, go!"
Mara grabbed one, hands burning as she hauled herself up, boots kicking against the barricade wall. Another scout scrambled up beside her, gasping, eyes wide with terror. Below, one of the scouts covered them with bursts from his rifle, half-turning between the horde and the ropes as the swarm closed in.
Then the second line of defence hit.
"Molotovs! NOW!"
Glass shattered, flames poured. Dozens of molotovs arced overhead and burst in the street below. Runners ignited mid-sprint, flailing as fire ate through fungus and flesh. The scent of burning flesh hit the air. Clickers shrieked as flames clung to their fungal plates, their keening cries echoing down the ruined street.
The horde didn't stop. They pushed through the fire, scrambling over the charred bodies of the fallen. The abomination roared, its fungal armor shrugging off flames as it smashed through a car and sent it flipping.
"Bombs!"
The defenders lobbed nail bombs over the barricade. The explosions tore into the press of infected, nails whistling like angry hornets. The street became a blender of sound detonations, shrieks, the crack of rifles, the frantic shouts of fighters. Blood and spore-clouds burst into the air, glowing faintly in the floodlight haze.
The scouts were halfway up now. One slipped, rope burning his palm, and Mara grabbed him by the harness, yanking him higher. "Don't stop! MOVE!"
Anders was last. He fired until his magazine clicked dry, then slung his rifle and leapt for the rope. Hands gripped him from above, hauling him over the barricade even as a runner's clawed hand swiped inches from his boot.
The horde slammed into the barricades with full force.
The makeshift wall of steel, sandbags, and scavenged furniture groaned under the impact. Dozens of infected hurled themselves at once, their bodies piling, climbing, clawing to reach the humans above. Clickers smashed their heads against the metal, shrieking blindly. Stalkers scrambled up debris piles, slashing at anything in reach.
The defenders poured fire down, the muzzle flashes strobing their faces in harsh bursts. Tasha knelt behind a firing slit, her marksman rifle cracking with precise shots. One clicker dropped, its skull split. Another staggered and fell. But her magazine was thin, and every bullet spent left her with fewer for the next fight.
"Reloading!"
Rusty hurled another molotov, his hands shaking. Flames bloomed, washing the barricade's base in fire. The shrieks rose to a new pitch as infected burned, but the wall held.
The scouts collapsed behind the defenses, gasping for air, their faces streaked with sweat and grime. Mara coughed hard, spit blackened phlegm, then forced herself up to the firing line. She wasn't done. None of them were.
The abomination came into view.
It was bigger now, closer, each stride shaking the ground. Fungus armor glistened wetly in the flashlight glow, patches cracked and bleeding. Its head jerked unnaturally, a broken crown of fungal plates, its shriek somewhere between a clicker's scream and a bloater's roar.
It barreled into the barricade, smashing against the steel with a force that made the entire wall shudder and dent. Defenders stumbled, weapons rattling from the vibration.
"Hit that bastard! Everything on it!"
Gunfire concentrated in one storm, sparks erupting across the creature's fungal plates. Molotovs burst against its chest, flames racing across its cracked armour. The abomination roared, swiping with claws thick as bone, tearing through burning wreckage.
Then another nail bomb hit it dead centre. The blast ripped chunks of fungus free, spraying spores like smoke. It staggered, shrieked, and slammed the wall again.
For a moment, it looked like the barricade might break.
But it held, barely. Its massive fungal infested hand has already penetrated the wall and was searching for either a victim or further things to rip apart from the barricade.
More fire. More bullets. Another molotov burst across its head. The abomination shrieked one last, earsplitting scream, then collapsed forward into the barricade, making one last dent int it.
Still twitching, with fungus infested body cracking apart in the flames.
The defenders didn't cheer. They just kept firing, cutting down the last of the infected as they clawed desperately at the wall.
Smoke filled the air. The street was littered with twitching bodies, firelight flickering across shattered pavement.
The scouts crouched behind the wall, still gasping, still alive.
And every single one of them knew the same truth: this hadn't been random.
Someone had tipped the horde onto them. Someone wanted them dead.
And if they hadn't had barricades ready, they would be.
The street didn't quiet after the first wave. It snarled, as nearby infected crawled out of every crevice to assault the position.
The smoke clung low, crawling around boots and barricade legs, pooling in the hollows where bodies had piled.
Firelight licked the edges of broken cars but now with the addition of a fuck ton of bullet holes. The stink was everywhere, burned hair, cooked fungus, hot copper.
"Hold your lanes!" Cole bellowed from the centre firing slit. "Short bursts! Don't cook your barrels!"
People obeyed because that was how you lived. Brass kept spilling. Tracers zipped and disappeared into meat. A runner got its fingers over the lip of a sandbag and Tasha put a round through its face without even looking like she was trying. Her next shot took the right plate off a clicker's crown; it fell screaming, twitched, then lay still in the wash of flames.
"Left gap! Left gap!" Rusty pointed with the muzzle of his rifle. Two stalkers had found a low crawl under a mangled pallet stack and were wriggling through like feral cats. Donny and Mara crossfired them, wood chips spraying, then the bodies jammed the hole.
"Reloading!" someone yelled. "Cover!"
"Covering!" three voices answered, like a reflex drilled too deep to die.
Below the abomination still twitched in the bonfire we'd made of it. The last nail bomb had cracked half its fungal plates and the molotovs had done the rest, but the fat fuck didn't go quiet like normal things. It spasmed, arching, the split carapace hissing as pooled rainwater flashed to steam.
Even minutes after its supposed death, a blind arm clawed once, twice, then dropped. The fire ate in.
"Check your masks," I said, not shouting, just loud enough over the net. "Red team, rotate off-line ten seconds and adjust seals. We hold this position. Reserve stays cold unless the wall goes."
Clicks answered. Across the barricade a line of filters breathed in ragged rhythm.
The horde kept coming.
Not a tidal wave now, more a rip current, steady, mean, dragging.
The runners hit the barricade and smeared in streaks of red; the clickers slammed and skittered back, shrieking. With every burst we cut three down and two more took their place.
"Scouts are up!" Mara panted, finally belly-flopping behind the sandbags. Her face was ash-streaked, eyes wild. "All present. Nobody dropped. I swear to God, this wasn't us being sloppy—"
"Breathe," I said. "Ammo?"
"Light," she admitted, then grimaced as her burned forearm brushed canvas. "Some bastard shot a car to set the alarm, then kept peppering the hood so it wouldn't die. Masked. Fast. We barely saw him. He led the dead right into our route."
"Copy," I said, even though my jaw was locking. "We'll hunt him later. Right now—"
The barricade shuddered as three clickers hit the same spot, the spot where the abomination put its claw through, one of their arms already inside twitching with frenzy looking for anything withing its grasp.
Metal groaned. Someone cursed. Cole leaned into the slit and stitched a line across them, neat ugly holes blooming. They fell together like puppets with cut strings.
We'd built the barricade like a throat. Narrow approaches. Kill pockets. Fire lanes that crossed but never converged. Behind the first wall we had the second; behind the second, a third, retreat paths marked in chalk that only my people knew. If we broke, we'd break on our feet.
"Second sled!" Cole snapped.
Four of ours heaved a metal plate onto the crack forming at the barricade's base, wedging it in and stomping it down. The press from the outside pushed it tight. Nails screeched over steel. Someone's hand below slid through and slapped at the metal like a drunk asking for change; Mara put a single bullet through it and the hand went away.
The abomination finally settled into the kind of stillness that meant the worst part was over. Its shells popped as the heat got in. Spores drifted in glowing veils, catching the light like snowfall. Everyone checked their seals again without me asking.
"Reserve?" I said into the radio. The second team waited just inside the tunnel mouth, helmets on, rucks at the ready, twitching to be useful.
"Staged," Alexandra answered. "We hear you. We're not moving without your word."
"Hold," I said. "We'll call you if the wall goes or if they surge through the west alley."
She clicked twice, understanding. She knew to keep them hungry. You didn't blow your second chance because your first felt crowded.
The runners thinned to clumps. Clickers kept singing their teeth together, palms skittering, legs pumping in jagged stutters. They hated the light and loved the sound of us. Once in a while a stalker dove sideways, trying to find a shadow seam. Most of the seams were gone. We cut them down.
"We're burning fast," Rusty said over the net. "I've got eight molotovs left here, four there. Nails are down to five. Mara, you light?"
"Half a mag and a prayer."
"You wish you had a prayer," he said, and there was even the ghost of a laugh tucked under it.
The next five minutes were just work. Squeeze, correct, breathe. Step, throw, duck. I had to force myself to keep my voice level, to count the beats between shot and reload, to leave actual thinking to the part of my brain that wasn't listening to the screaming.
The rain hissed against hot metal. Bodies twitched and stilled and steamed.
"Second line, on me," Cole called. "We're going to clear the right pocket. Cal, I want your eyes."
"Do it,"
They went over the tops of the sandbags like they'd rehearsed it a thousand times. They had. Two stepped, two covered. Their boots touched the narrow shelf of welded plate we'd bolted to the back of the barricade for this exact move.
They moved fast and low, hugging the wall, and at the corner Cole popped out long enough to rake a burst across the right-hand feeder alley.
Three forms folded. A fourth stumbled, shot through the gut; Mara flicked a knife and it sank under the clavicle with the sound of wet wood splitting. The thing dropped like a sack.
A clicker launched from a window and hit Cole square. He didn't fall. He twisted, used its momentum, and slammed it into the barricade so hard the fungus on its head cracked like old ceramic. He put his knife up under its jaw and back into the brain and shoved it off, body thumping the steel.
"Clear," he grunted, breath tight.
"Back in," I said. "We're not salvaging. We're not chasing."
They slid back behind the sandbags and the line sealed again. Another molotov bloomed; fire crawled like an animal, licking toward a pile of bodies until the pile agreed to burn.
"Medic!" someone shouted. "Burns!"
Anders had a forearm the colour of raw steak, blistering where a molotov splash had kissed him. He was gritting his teeth so hard the muscle jumped in his jaw.
"Back him up,"
"Triage two. Wrap and ice. He stays behind the second wall."
A masked figure we'd trained up as a runner-turned-medic slid in, snapped open a kit, and layered on gel like frosting. Anders' shoulders dropped, a shudder of relief working through him.
"You're sloppy," Rusty told him conversationally, reloading. "Should've checked your angles."
Anders gave him a look that could've cut wire. "Some psycho shot a car to ring the dinner bell and then kept the horn alive with rounds. That's not sloppy. That's an execution."
"Keep arguing," Cole said dryly, "and I'll throw both of you in front of the wall to work it out."
The last of the runners broke in waves. The clickers didn't. They kept at it, harder, tighter, like they'd decided if sound brought them here, sound was church and they would not blaspheme by leaving. We took them heads first if we could. When we couldn't, we took them apart in pieces.
One of ours, Gabi, took a claw across the hip trying to yank a sandbag back into place. She yelped but didn't drop. The claw left three lines that started to leak immediately. She slapped a pad on it, hissed, and kept shooting.
"Gabi down to second," Cole ordered. "You're not a martyr. Trade out with Nils."
She hesitated like she might argue, then caught my eye and didn't. She shuffled back through the heat and smoke, teeth flashing once in a quick grin as she passed me. "Still hate night shifts," she muttered.
"Noted,"Cole said
We hit a lull and didn't trust it. You never trust the quiet after a swarm. It has teeth.
Cal leaned far enough to look past the far edge of the barricade and took in the street. Bodies, fire, steam. A single clicker stood in the middle of it all, head cocked, clicking to the night like it could charm the darkness into giving it more friends.
Tasha made its head vanish with a poof, like a magic trick.
"Ammo check," I said. The chorus came back: light, light, light. Half our line had one mag or less. Someone handed down four scrounged sticks they'd stripped from a dead runner's chest rig like a grim gift. We redistributed.
And then, because the world doesn't like to be predictable, the last of the stalkers did the bravest, dumbest thing I've ever seen an infected do. It went up.
It found a stack of pallets we'd been meaning to move, climbed them in three convulsive bounds, and launched itself for the top of the barricade. It cleared the steel, caught the edge of a floodlight casing, and scrabbled for purchase with clawed toes.
It probably had the song "I believe I can fly" in its mushroom brain.
Rusty met it halfway. He didn't shoot. He hit it with a crowbar, right across the teeth. The sound made my teeth hurt in return. The thing dropped, legs flopping at angles legs aren't supposed to go. Donny put a round in it on principle.
"Reserve?" Alexandra said through the radio. "Your wall is smoking like a birthday cake. You sure you don't want us to sing?"
I looked down the line. We had flames but not failure. The metal plate we'd wedged into the crack had welded itself in with heat and pressure. The sandbags that hadn't burst were black and wet with rain and blood. Everyone still standing was still fighting. Everyone who'd fallen back was already clawing to stand again.
"Negative," I said. "Stay staged. We'll need you if there's a second push."
"If there's a second push, it's because I shoved them," she said. "Copy. Holding."
Two more minutes of controlled killing.
Then, like the breath leaving a lung, it was done. Not clean. Never clean. But over.
Silence wasn't silence. It was groaning metal, crackling fire, drip-drip-drip off the gutter broken by the hiss of something finally going cold. It was the soft animal sounds of the wounded—our wounded—gritting back curses while medics worked. It was the slap of a magazine seating, the ragged ha-ha from someone who hadn't expected to still be nervous enough to laugh.
"Cease," Cole said. His voice finally sounded human again. "Hold. Eyes on. Nobody stands up all the way yet."
We peered over, a forest of helmet rims and rifle barrels. The street was a bad painting. Everywhere you looked, there was another smear of black and red and orange. Steam hid the ugliest parts. Not all of them.
"Count," I said.
The scouts called out, breathless but upright. The line answered. No dead. Wounded: Burns: four. Gashes: two. One concussion from a sandbag that decided it was time to be a brick.
"Good," I said. "You did good."
"Yeah?" Anders said, flexing his gel-glossed arm. "Because I was really thinking we ate it out there until you turned the street into a barbecue."
"Don't flatter me," Rusty said. "It was a boil first. Then a barbecue."
"No but Seriously," Mara said, voice rough, her shoulder poped with every move she did with that arm.
"This wasn't random. Someone jackass made noise and pointed it at us. Mask, tall, jacket with a torn sleeve. He shot the car, then kept the horn alive with bullets. He wanted us dead."
I let that sink into the quiet because it needed to. It didn't take courage to say it. It took accuracy. The difference mattered.
"Okay," I said. "Two truths. One: someone tried to kill you. Two: the next person who tries won't bring anything we haven't already survived."
It wasn't bravado. It was math. We'd built a wall to hold. We'd held it.
Medics moved. Burn cream hissed on skin. Bandages flashed pale in the floodlight. We dragged bodies with hooks and loops, piling them where the fire could finish what it had started. Spores drifted and settled and we set up fans to shove them back the way they'd come, into the teeth of heat. The street slowly turned from hellscape to crime scene.
Cole squatted beside the abomination's carcass and stared at it like it had insulted his ancestors. "Halfway there," he muttered. "If there's a line between what those things are and what they become, it crossed it and got stuck."
"Like a tooth in meat," Rusty said. "Something we can choke on."
"Next time it won't be halfway," Tasha said. She was checking her bolt, movements small and precise. The lens of her scope glinted. "Next time it brings a friend."
"Next time," I said, "we're ready sooner."
I knew how much we'd spent. I could feel the weight of empty mags just as clearly as I could feel the roster of injuries. We'd burned through nails and bottles and patience.
The abomination, that someone had taken to calling it Abed the abomination, had taken a fuckton squared number of bullets and 3 bombs' worth of nails and few molotovs and still made us sweat.
The barricade would need work. The people would need sleep we weren't likely to get.
Alexandra arrived with the reserve to help clean and not a second earlier. She took one look and whistled. "You told us to hold," she said. "You should've told us to bring marshmallows."
"Go check the far alleys," I said. "If anyone's watching, I want eyes on them. If anyone runs, I want footprints to follow tomorrow."
She nodded, snapped orders, and her team peeled off in pairs, rifles held low, heads on a swivel.
"Cal," Joe said, stepping in close enough that the floodlight shadow of his helmet rim cut across his mouth. "You feel that?"
"What."
"The shape of it," he said. "They're trying to push us. Somebody's testing where we break."
My shoulders ached. My hands hurt in the deep, stupid way that means you won't feel it until you try to sleep. I looked over the burning street and saw where the barricade had bowed, where the weld had held, where the abomination had nearly punched us a new door. I saw the boutiques and tenements around us with their lights out and their curtains closed, the people behind them too scared to breathe too loud.
"We don't break here," I said. "We don't break on a street we fucking built."
Joe's mouth twitched. Not a smile, but the memory of one. "Copy that."
We stayed on the wall for another forty minutes, because impatience is how you die after you've done the hard part. When the last twitching body went still and the last fire had been herded to where it wouldn't climb, we rotated the line in, one file at a time. The reserve took our places like they'd always been there.
Inside, the air tasted like metal and victory and a lot of things I didn't have time to name. We staged the wounded, logged the ammo, jotted down every detail we could remember while it was still hot in our heads. Mara drew a quick thumbnail of the masked figure who'd shot the car height, torn sleeve, the way he ran with his knees slightly out like his ankles had been badly sprained once and never fully healed. Small things you could build a hunt on.
When it got quiet enough that I could hear my own heartbeat again, I stepped back to the barricade and put my hand flat on the warm steel. The city beyond was a black jag of horizon under a low ceiling of cloud. No sirens. No cavalry. Just the drip and the crackle and the distant plink of rain hitting cooling metal.
I'd thought the worst pressure on us would always come from men in uniforms or men with revolution stitched into their eyes.
Tonight had reminded me of the truth I'd learned at twelve and apparently needed reminding of at thirteen: the dead aren't a faction. They don't make truces. They don't take bribes. They don't sign pacts. They just relentlessly push to drag you to hell with them.
Maybe someone had pointed them at us. Maybe they'd have found us anyway. Either way, the math didn't change. You could spend your nights making deals and drawing lines, but every equation in this city still had the same constant: the infected kept you honest. Kept you tired. Kept you small if you let them.
I took my hand off the steel and flexed my fingers. The skin on my palm was pink from the heat.
"Alright," I said, turning back to the line, to our people, to the mess that would be there tomorrow with the sun. "Reset. We rotate shifts. We clean, we repair, we reload. And then we find the son of a bitch who pulled that trigger."
Nobody cheered. Everybody moved.
Casualties: none dead. Not tonight. Wounded: several. The abomination had cost us dearly in ammo and burns, and it had given me back a familiar feeling I hadn't wanted: the sense that even if the living had set the board, the dead were always sneaking pieces onto it when you weren't looking.
Whether random or manipulated, they were still a tide at our door.
And tides don't care who you owe, or who owes you. They just come.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Later as Cal was at home in bed, his parents still yet to arrive, probably being pestered by that ray of sunshine Renner and his hounds.
The prompt slid across his vision without fanfare, cold white letters over the dark:
[Main Mission: Divided Roads]Option A: Expand Inside
Deeper ties with FEDRA.
Join the Fireflies.
Or take over the QZ as an independent power. WARNING - PICKING THIS OPTION GUARANTEES WAR WITH ALL THE OTHER MAJOR FACTIONS IN BOSTON QZ AND BOSTON CITY UNLESS YOU HAVE HIGH RELATION AND TRADE WITH THEM - CURRENT FACTION REALTIONSHIPS AND FEAR FACTORS ARE DOWN BELOW.
Option B: Expand Outside
Establish Safehouse.
Begin leaving Boston.
Build your own faction with potential for long-term growth and less immediate conflict. WARNING - PICKCING THIS OPTION WILL TRIGGER AN UNEVITABLE LARGE SCALE "RAID" BY THE INFECTED HORDE DOWN THE IMMEDIETE FUTURE.
Reward Pools Differ Depending on Path.
[Faction Relationship & Fear Rating Overview]
FEDRA – Boston QZ Command
Relationship: Neutral / Pragmatic (leans Tense)They buy from Cal and allow him to function as a "resource associate," but Renner and other officers are deeply suspicious. Voss respects results, but Cal's independence worries them.
Fear Factor:HighAfter seeing what he did to the raiders, even hardened officers treat him carefully.
FEDRA – Rocky Mountain HQ
Relationship: Monitored / DistantThey see Cal as a "potential asset" under evaluation. His independence is tolerated for now, but only because he delivers valuable goods.
Fear Factor:LowThey've heard of his brutality, but he isn't the worst they have delt with, he hasn't directly crossed them yet.
The Fireflies – Boston Cell
Relationship: Suspicious / Uneasy TruceMarlene is wary after the massacre and his cold refusal to join them. Some Fireflies see him as a dangerous wildcard, possibly worse than FEDRA. Others are curious if he could be turned.
Fear Factor:HighStories of the crucifixion and his growing numbers disturb them. Some whisper he's "FEDRA's monster," others think he could rival them one day.
Merchants & Smugglers (Robert, Independents, Black Market Factions)
Relationship: Respectful/FriendlyRobert and Meredith respect him as an equal player. Independents tread lightly, knowing he's neither FEDRA's dog nor a Firefly pawn.
Fear Factor:High to Very HighThe story of the "kid warlord" who burned a whole gang alive circulates constantly. Nobody wants to be next.
Ordinary Survivors / Civilian QZ Populace
Relationship: Mixed – Fearful AdmirationCivilians whisper his name like a ghost story. Some admire him as a protector, others fear he's just another brutal faction leader in the making. Parents warn kids about crossing him.
Fear Factor:Moderate (creeping upward)Enough to deter petty theft and betrayal, not enough to inspire total loyalty.
Outside Boston (Smaller survivor camps, roaming smugglers, infected clusters)
Relationship: Unknown / DistantWord has spread about "the kid warlord of Boston," but outside groups don't know if he's worth allying with or avoiding.
Fear Factor:Low to ModerateHis reputation hasn't fully reached them yet, though the crucifixion story is spreading fast.
[System Note]Pursuing "Take Over the QZ" will put Cal in open war with FEDRA Command, Firefly Cells, and most Independents unless his Relationship and Fear Factor are significantly raised with them.
Cal exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh, but not one with humour. The System had a way of putting the weight he already felt into words that cut too clean.
Inside… or Outside.
Inside meant politics, uniforms, lies wrapped in rations and curfews. He'd seen how FEDRA could crush anyone they deemed "useful but dangerous." He'd seen the Fireflies whisper about freedom with one hand and load a pistol and point it to someones head with the other. Either way, it was a leash.
Outside was different.
Outside was fire, teeth, shadows in the ruins. But it was his. The city didn't lie it just wanted you dead. You could respect that. If they carved out a place beyond the walls, they might actually live by their own rules. No curfews. No inspections. No whispered bargains in dark alleys. Just survival, and what they built with their own hands.
But he knew leaving meant losing the thin shield of order the QZ still provided. No fences. No floodlights. No fallback. Just his people and the System against everything else.
He leaned back in the chair, staring at the cracked ceiling. He thought of his parents, still barely reconciling the hundred souls who called him leader. He thought of Lia's quiet smiles, of Rusty's restless tinkering, of Cole's hard-edged loyalty. He thought of the abomination thrashing in fire, and the figure in the mask that had tipped the dead toward them like chess pieces.
There were too many eyes on him now. FEDRA inspections. Firefly spies. Even independents measuring whether to fear him, follow him, or sell him out.
"I can't stay neutral forever," he whispered into the lantern glow.
The words weren't for the System. They were for himself.